Full Bloom

ONE
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    A ll things considered, Emily Ravenscroft thought, she was taking the news of the outcome of her latest folly much better than she had the last time. She was wryly proud of herself. No tears, no rush of despair, no hysterical protests. Her assertiveness training class instructor would have been proud of her.
    Emily took the news and kept on smiling.
    It wasn't much of a smile, just a faint, ironic curve of her mouth, but it was enough to conceal the pain and the anger that were simmering inside.
    It was also enough of a smile to thoroughly alarm three of the four people who confronted her in her father's study. She could not see what effect her smile had on the fourth person in the room. He was standing apart from the others, a dark, brooding figure concealed in shadows.
    Jacob Stone was a man who was at home in shadows.
    Ever since Emily had first become aware of his existence five years ago, she had understood that he prowled the fringes of her family's world. He was part bodyguard, part troubleshooter and, to Emily's way of dunking, part enforcer for Ravenscroft International. Like the last of the lobo wolves, he was rarely seen in broad daylight, let alone in the firm's executive suites or at its glittering social functions. And the only times he had been invited into her father's private study were on those occasions when Emily had needed rescuing from her latest predicament. The Ravenscrofts preferred to keep family problems quiet, and Jacob Stone could be relied on to do a job and keep family secrets to himself.
    Emily had not seen Jacob Stone in nearly two years. It had been a shock to find him here at her parents' home this evening. She had assumed he was still abroad.
    But it was an even bigger shock to discover that the passion she had first experienced for him five years ago had not died, after all. It had only gone dormant. Seeing Jacob again tonight had been like pouring rain and sunlight on fertile soil. Emily could literally feel the seeds of her old love sprouting again.
    Don't be stupid
, she told herself fiercely.
You've got problems enough without letting yourself get sucked back into a young, immature woman's fantasy
. She was twenty-seven years old now, and she had changed.
    Emily didn't waste any time trying to guess how Jacob was reacting to her unexpected calm. She knew enough about him to realize that no one would ever understand him unless he wished it, and that was highly unlikely. He was a man who operated alone, working by his own rules even when he was doing a job for his employers. Emily thought of him in the same way she thought of hurricanes, charging lions and marauding sharks. The only sensible thing to do when any of them was in the vicinity was to get out of the way.
    But sometimes one could not avoid acts of nature. They descended with the inevitability of fate.
    She had not had a close look at Jacob Stone since she had so innocently walked into the study twenty minutes earlier, but she remembered him well enough from two years ago when she had last seen him. He would not have changed much. Chunks of granite did not alter greatly in short spans of time. It took aeons to modify even slightly the face of a rock cliff. Jacob Stone would probably look much the same forty years from now as he had two years ago.
    Without looking at him, Emily knew he would still have those cold, emotionless gray eyes and those harsh, unyielding features. He would still be wearing his tawny brown hair in a short, almost military style. His body would still be lean and hard and solid, too, Emily suspected. Stone had more than enough self-discipline to keep himself from getting soft. He would be thirty-seven by now. Tougher and more intimidating than ever.
    And, she decided in a flash of affectionate amusement, he would still look vaguely uncomfortable in a suit. Jacob Stone frequently wore a suit and tie when he was working for Ravenscroft International, but he would never really look at home in the traditional businessman's outfit. Putting a suit and tie on Stone was a little like dressing up any large, wild beast. Even if the tie was silk and the suit Italian, you couldn't disguise the fact that what was underneath was still big and dangerous and had a set of teeth.
    The tape in the recording machine sitting on Gifford Ravenscroft's desk hissed into silence. Emily stared at the small, sleek tape player and tried to hate Jacob Stone for what he had done this evening. He was the one who had